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A Journal of the Plague Year (Penguin Classics)
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Item Description...
In 1665 the Great Plague swept through London, claiming nearly 100,000 lives. In A Journal, written nearly sixty years later, Defoe vividly chronicled the progress of the epidemic. We follow his fictional narrator through a city transformed: the streets and alleyways deserted; the houses of death with crosses daubed on their doors; the dead-carts on their way to the pits. And he recounts the horrifying stories of the citizens he encounters, as fear, isolation and hysteria take hold. A Journal is both a fascinating historical document and a supreme work of imaginative reconstruction.
This edition, based on the original 1722 text, contains a new introduction, an appendix on the plague, a topographical index and maps of contemporary London, and includes Anthony Burgess's original introduction.
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Item Specifications...
Pages 336
Dimensions: Length: 0.75" Width: 5" Height: 7.75"
Weight: 0.6 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date Aug 1, 2003
Publisher Penguin Group USA
ISBN 0140437851
EAN 9780140437850
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Availability 7 units.
Availability accurate as of May 26, 2012 05:12.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Entertaining Historical Work Marred by Lack of Proofreading Mar 30, 2010 |
| I have long wanted to read this classic account of the Black Death in London. Couldn't believe all the typos, which a notice at the beginning attributes to OCR--the pages are scanned rather than typed. The publisher's excuse is they need to keep costs down. Like they couldn't find a graduate student in English or History who wanted to pick up a bit of money proofreading? I would rather pay more for a properly edited book. | | |  | Why Teens Should Read This Dec 23, 2009 |
1.Defoe is fascinating biography subject:
Ian Watt remarked that Defoe "was a hard man who led a hard life: raised as a Dissenter in the London of the Great Plague and Great Fire; enduring Newgate prison and the pillory in bankrupt middle age; working as a secret agent and a scandalous journalist until imprisoned again for debt and treason. Defoe died old, and so may be accounted as a survivor, but he had endured a good share of reality, and his novels reflect that endurance."
2. Observing and personalizing "real world" problems can inspire you to read and enjoy related literature. Thank G-d the H1N1 Flu causes mild to moderate symptoms despite its fierce contagiousness. However, I'm sure most of your mothers and others have made anxiety ridden phone calls to the pediatrician. We live in a Global Village. How long is it before one rural Chinese farmer falls ill and China Air cancels flights out of Beijing. Even the Plague, today having a mere 15% mortality rate down from the Medieval high of 75% can still wreak havoc. And it is a fact that the recent completion of the Kinshasa Highway enabled the transmission of AIDS epidemic throughout Africa. Is it so far-fetched?Someone collapses in Cape Town, schools close across Europe, ports are inspected along the Atlantic shore, riots break out surrounding Kaiser-Permanente, Japanese civilians receive face masks from their government... DeFoe's London is a microcosm of our world.
3. In order for you to like reading, you have to be exposed to a variety of genres to help discover your own interests. The Journal of the Plague Year is a great introduction to Historical Fiction, or even Literary Journalism-- even if it was written so early that the genre would not yet be coined for a few hundred years. After all, Defoe is credited with being one of the earliest innovators of the novel itself. I personally love the genre, it makes me fell like I'm time traveling, sans jet lag. Historical fiction by the way, is also popular genre for mini-series, HBO is particularly good for shows like Deadwood, Rome, John Adams, and The Tudors. | | |  | A Journal of the Plague Year - 1722 Mar 17, 2009 |
Plot Kernel - A survivor of the plague of 1665 in London recounts the event. He tells of the shutting up and guarding of houses where anyone infected resides, imprisoning the entire household because of the illness of one; of the anger and despair of those shut-in, and of the strategies used to trick the watchmen and sometimes escape. He tells of the dead-carts and the great pits where the dead were thrown and buried. He meets a man whose wife and children are shut-in but he is not, and how he provides for them. He relates a story he was told of a group of uninfected people who fled the city and the difficulties they had with the distrust of others. He discusses the numbers dead, the sweep of the pestilence and the effects of it on England's trade with other countries.
Note: There isn't any actual plot, in the sense of a character contending against difficulties and reaching some sort of resolution. The narrator is merely an observer, to whom nothing significant happens. The text has no chapter breaks or section breaks. The narrative rambles, is repetitive, and is only loosely structured. It is a fictional account of an actual event. Defoe was five years old in 1665.
The book from which I read this novel is not the one under which this review is placed. The book I have is a volume in the Library of Essential Writers (not listed on this site) and contains five of Defoe's novels. There is only a short biographical introduction, and nothing concerning the content of the novels, so I don't know whether Defoe's account of the plague is accurate in the details of its spread, the degree of its contagion, the measure of law enforced, the behavior of those infected, the caution and fright, or of anything else that would be discussed in a scholarly introduction to the novel. | | | | Truth stranger than fiction Aug 28, 2008 |
I agree with a previous reviewer that Defoe's "Journal of the Plague Year" is a journalistic history, not fiction. He describes an event that happened when he was only, I think, an infant. He has used family and other accounts of the last great epidemic of the Black Death to strike England. It is readable and instructive.
To me, the most interesting part of the tale, is the 'knowledge' people had of this disease before knowledge of microbes and their transmission. Animals, especially dogs, cats and rats, were identified as possible transmission agents and were shot on sight. Infected people are quarantined in their homes along with their relatives. Although these homes were guarded by armed people, breakouts from quarantine were common. The disease spread and uninfected villages on the outskirts of London, themselves set out guards, preventing panicked refugees from entering and infecting their towns. An interesting tale of desperation.
Ron Braithwaite, author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. | | |  | A LIE!!! TOTAL FALSEHOODS!!!! WHAT A FRAUD!!! May 9, 2008 |
This book is obviously filled with conceits from the very beginning. Daniel Defoe tries to make the reader to feel that he was acctualy there, which is impossible because the events took place hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and the only person who was alive then and is still alive now is JESUS CHRIST! Certianly not some HACK from GODDLESSNESSLAND, USA, I mean hollywood. I guess being an actor, Mr. Defoe is used to living lies made flesh, but it still is very tiresome the way that he pretends to have witnessed the events he writes about in this book. What a worn out, tired old cliched way of writing. I shouldnt be supprised, since Defoe had the NERVE to take the ROLE OF JESUS CHRIST THE PRINCE OF LOVE AND PEACE in the peice of trash talking blasphemy THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST!!!! Taking on such a role displays a HUGE lack of both imagination and TACT!! He and the filmmakers and in fact, all of hollywood should be given the BOOT for their BLASPHEMIES and for their routine practice of corrupting the minds of our once GREAT notion's CHILDREN!
Then, to top it all off, in the commentary and appendixes the editors display their oblivious LIBERAL BIASES by including two totaly pointless and off the subject essays about AIDS!!! Books like these are in school libraries all over the country- I dont want my children reading that! Nor do I want other peoples' children that! The LIBERAL MEDIA make me gag!!!!
This boo should be banned from school libraries, and in fact, from all libraries. | | | Write your own review about A Journal of the Plague Year (Penguin Classics)
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